Now pecans make very attractive shade trees. I used to live near Kansas City on a place where someone had planted 18 or 20 pecans right along the side of a golf course. When the trees were about 20 years old a fairway was laid out through this pecan grove and now blue grass grows right up to the tree trunks. A lot of other shade trees are shallow rooted and lawns do not grow well under them. I think there is a tremendous opportunity to plant pecans as shade trees.
There is just one other point I want to make. Undoubtedly we need better varieties. The nurseryman realizes this better than anyone else. But when my friend from Brunswick sold his native pecans he got just about as much for them per pound as the southern growers got for their much larger southern seedlings. Several commercial pecan crackers that I asked about this stated that the northern nuts have a better flavor and they produce more kernels per pound. So the size of the kernel doesn't make too much difference, although we all prefer the larger nuts.
Pecans in Northern Virginia
J. Russell Smith, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
(Extracts from a letter to the NNGA secretary, November 26, 1951)
Having sold my Virginia cabin and the nursery business [Sunny Ridge] I have been down to the nursery for the last month getting rid of trees. A job of digging is one thing and that of packing and shipping is another. The man I had could do one but not both, and competent persons to pick up for either job are not available, so I have been standing in the gap, getting calluses on my hands and getting rid of $16,000 worth of trees.
Now as to facts on northern pecans:
I find the Busseron bears with regularity at Round Hill, Virginia, in a tight bluegrass sod. This pasture is not of high fertility and has had a small amount of commercial fertilizer. It is on a hillside that has probably lost all of its topsoil once or twice in the last hundred years, though not for the last twenty because it has been in grass.
My neighbor, Henry B. Taylor, Hamilton, Virginia, has Busseron, Butterick, Greenriver, Indiana, and Major, all bearing well to heavily.